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7.29.2005

car shopping

The Good Doctor, Joel T., decided his 1991 Jeep Wrangler just wasn't cutting it anymore. The clutch was faulty, it got horrible gas mileage, it was totally falling apart...and besides...he just finished his residency so he didn't have to drive the damn thing anymore.

He asked me if I'd go car shopping with him, so we hopped in the Jeep and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County, where all the Really Nice Car Dealerships are located.

It was one of those picture-perfect Northern California summer days.

Now, Joel was thinking about maybe a BMW, Volkswagen, or Audi convertible. I mean, he's gay, he's a doctor, and he lives in San Francisco, so it's expected of him to purchase a sporty, expensive, German automobile, no?

Well, Joel is from Erie, Pennsylvania...to be honest, he's always wanted a black Ford Mustang convertible with a black leather interior, manual transmission, and a 6-cylinder engine (this is San Francisco, remember...gasoline prices are just absurd) since he was sixteen years old. We walked into Marin Ford for shits and giggles, not really expecting to find anything. However, we were stunned to find this thing sitting on the showroom floor, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Immediately, Joel insisted they take it outside so he could play with it.

Trust me, I wanted to get my hands on it too. I've wanted to drive one of these since they came out.

We couldn't believe it...the exact car Joel wanted...right in front of us. It had such a cool interior...Ford did a good job with this one:

It begged us to take it for a spin...

So Joel climbed behind the wheel, I squeezed in the back seat, and the salesperson got in the passenger side. Joel put it in gear, released the clutch...

...and promptly stalled it.

I laughed out loud, and yelled, "GEEK!" Joel shot me a look in the rearview mirror and tried again. The Mustang roared back to life, and with a slight bark of the tires, we were on our way.

Joel and I were instantly smitten. It was the ultimate Boy Car, and at that particular moment, we weren't two gay men in their thirties, we were two midwestern teenagers playing with a grownup-sized toy. He let me drive it (I didn't stall it...ha ha ha Joel), and I took it out on the 101 and drove the thing like it was meant to be driven.

Fast, with precision. Just like my pop taught me.

Basically, I leaned into it a bit and accelerated to approximately 85 MPH before my built-in Drivers License Preservation Alarm went off...not to mention I remembered it actually belonged to Marin Ford.

I'm such a goddamn kid sometimes.

However, being sensible Midwesterners, we decided to look at those pretty, shiny, blinged-out rides the Germans were offering. So, we bade Marin Ford adieu, climbed back into the Jeep, and drove over to Sonnen Motorcars, where this rather stern-looking automobile greeted us.

I have to admit...it was pretty, but it was also approximately $10,000 more than the Mustang. We decided to poke our heads inside to see what else they had.

"Um, may I help you?" asked the receptionist with an annoyed tone as we walked inside.

Joel and I looked at each other, puzzled as to why the woman had no idea why we were there. I mean, it isn't like we were pushing a shopping cart and asking where the produce section was. For god's sake, it's a car dealership. What the hell did she think we were in there for?

"Well, we're just looking to buy a car, that's all." I was annoyed. "I guess we're just looking."

"There are no salespeople here right now, you'll have to come back tomorrow," she curtly replied.

At this point, Joel decided that even if there was a car there he might want to buy, he'd buy it somewhere else. Miss Bitchypants kinda stunk the place up with her shitty attitude. Now, maybe she was having a bad day. That's fine. But we walked into the dealership with a jovial and friendly attitude, and actually said hello to her first.

It would have been nice if she hadn't been so unpleasant.

Are you listening, Sonnen? You should teach your staff to not be rude to two gay men from San Francisco, one of which had a lot of money to spend, the other who acted like he did (I would have been the latter).

We decided to ignore her and look at some of the goodies parked around the showroom.

Now, this was was WAY too big, even if it was absolutely stunning. It's an Audi A8 with the W12 engine (translation: huge, powerful, 12-cylinder beast that sucks down copious amounts of petroleum). It was much more automobile than Joel needed, but I imagined myself crossing the United States in this gorgeous machine with the huge schozz:

It was also approximately $117,000. I had my checkbook with me; I figured if I wrote a check for it, I'd have just enough time to drive it to Honduras where nobody would ever find me.

We walked over to the Jetta instead:

It just left me wanting more.

We decided we had had just about enough of Sonnen, so off we traipsed to the next stop...RAB Motors in beautiful San Rafael, California.

Oh hell yeah...now you're talking.

I was enchanted by these machines...so bold, so powerful, so...Teutonic.

I was lost in my own world for a bit...Joel went to look at some other cars while I just snapped away.

Joel quickly decided that most everything on the lot was a bit out his price range, save for a few SLK's that were lined up on the lot.

Total Bottom Cars. Like VW New Beetle convertibles.

Blech. Not for me. I never liked these SLK's very much anyway...they're too damn small and I feel like a total homofaggotsissygirl in them. I do like the new ones, though. It only took Mercedes eight years to get the damn things right.

We were quite amused at this handwritten thing in the windshield of this used...oh wait, I'm sorry, pre-owned vehicle. Apparently, this is Marin County's answer to a tag sale:

You'd think for a car just $12 south of One Hundred Large they at least could have had someone with better handwriting scrawl that out. And what exactly is "European Pricing" anyway?

Maybe that's just part of the Marin County charm...who knows?

Joel and I had a good laugh over that one.

We headed back over the Golden Gate Bridge...

...where the last rays of sun bathed the towers in golden light.

Of course, there was no way around the $5 cover charge to get back into San Francisco...

...but I guess it was worth it. It was one of the most gorgeous evenings I've ever seen here. Usually it's cold and foggy at that time of day, but instead...

7.28.2005

happy birthday, mom

That's a picture of my mom, taken in 1968, shortly after she got married and moved to Cleveland from Chicago (where she grew up). I'm not going to say how old she is today, but I will say she is young at heart, and wise beyond her years.

Growing up, she made sure we all sat down as a family to a home-cooked meal, prepared more or less from scratch, every night...even though she worked full-time. She was a den mother for Cub Scout Den 3, Pack 7, and held the meetings every Tuesday afternoon in the dining room of the house. She was what you'd call a Power Mom...and all of her time and energy -- and Dad's for that matter -- went into making sure her kids were healthy, happy, well-fed, well-educated, exposed to fine art and music, and loved.

She also could have written Miss Manners' column...any time I am in some sort of tight social situation, I always think to myself, "How would Mom handle this?" It always turns out to be the right decision. She was loving, but also firm, almost always fair, and has extremely high standards. "Good enough" is not good enough for her. She always demanded The Very Best out of my sisters and me, and also herself (she's her own worst critic...and people wonder why I'm like that).

Speaking of columns...she's the editor of Focus Magazine, a publication that is mailed quarterly to every household and business in the City of Cleveland Heights. Most of the content of that magazine, and also clevelandheights.com, is her handiwork...her classy, smooth, and polished writing style is recognizable immediately. When I was a kid, I once told her anytime you read anything she wrote out loud, you had to move your mouth around a lot. Let's just say she knows a lot of big words, and was never afraid to use them around her kids.

Her beef stroganoff, meat loaf, beef stew, pepper steak, stir-fry, cream of carrot soup, Thai chicken coconut soup (yes, she makes a mean tom ka gai), baked chicken, and from-scratch mashed potatoes are the best I've ever had. I can't tell you how many chilly fall Monday evenings when I'd come home from CCD (it's a Catholic thing) and the aroma of whatever she was cooking would greet me -- along with an affectionate Dalmatian -- as soon as I walked in the back door. She also has eyes in the back of her head...she'd leave a bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough on the counter, and even if she was upstairs, she'd know when I was about to stick my hands in the bowl because she'd always yell "Get away from the cookie dough!"

I have no idea how she did that. I could never get away with anything. She's just too damn smart and clever, and she can smell bullshit from a mile away...and she doesn't tolerate it, either.

7.26.2005

oh, balls.

So I came home today, and I found a chartreuse piece of paper taped to the front door of my building. Apparently, they're going to use the alleyway and my building in a Sony commercial. This is what the note said:

MJZ Productions2201 Carmelina AvenueLos Angeles, CA 90024

July 26, 2005

Dear Residents of the Kearny & Vallejo Street Area, [funny, I was just thinking of changing my name to exactly that]

In coordination with the Film Commission, the San Francisco Police Department and the Mayor's Office, a local San Francisco film crew has been hired to film a national television commercial for SONY in your neighborhood on Wednesday, July 27th, 2005, between the hours of 5:00 am and 3:00 pm.

Okay, so they're filming another commercial around here. Nothing so unusual about that. I read on:

This commercial will have thousands of soft rubber balls cascading down the streets in your neighborhood. [No, really. I'm not making that up. It really said that.] We have a large group of personnel help to help wrangle all these balls when each take is concluded. A host of the balls will be caught in nets.

At this point, I looked around to make sure I wasn't being secretly filmed. This, I thought to myself, I have GOT to see. It was probably the strangest note I had ever seen taped to my front gate. I continued reading:

The overall concept of the commercial requires that we close the streets to the general public and to traffic so we may control the intersection during our shooting. However, WE WILL BE ALLOWING ANY RESIDENT TO DROVE THROUGH OUR SET TO GET TO THEIR RESPECTIVE GARAGE.

If you have any special concerns please feel free to contact us.

Thanking you in advance for your assistance.

Wait, MY assistance? If those muhfukkas think for one minute I'm gonna be running up and down the hills fetching a bunch of goddamn balls rolling around...well, maybe I'll help 'em out a little bit, but you'd better believe I'm gonna try to grab some of those balls.

'Cause I'm so good at it, ya know?

Get it? Ball grabbing?

Oh, whatever. This is gonna be strange. I already saw my building (including my bedroom and living room windows) one night in a Nissan Murano commercial, and of course, that Reese Witherspoon flick they filmed last November (that link is to my photoblog about that whole thing).

Great. Tomorrow, my neighborhood is going to be taken over by a bunch of balls.

"Yes honey, I have a Pepsi Challenge for you." Mom is used to random 1970's and 80's advertising tag lines suddenly manisfesting themselves in my mind.

"I love Pepsi Challenges."

"Yes honey, I know you do. So tell you what, for one week (she really stressed that), why don't you compose blog posts you would feel comfortable with your mother reading."

I mulled over her Challenge. "But then it won't be interesting, and I won't be able to use any cuss words."

"You don't need to use cuss words."

"Yeah, I know, but I like using cuss words. It's my goddamn blog."

"Just don't use so many cuss words."

"Okay, fine."

"And don't blog about [something bad that just happened]."

"Okay, I promise I won't write about that. I wasn't going to anyway."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

I guess I should clean this place up a bit. I'll try not to say fuck, shit, cunt, blubbercunt, fluffyblubbercunt, sissycuntpussybitch, motherfucker, cocksucker, or buttfucker as much as I have been recently. But don't be surprised if I occasionally slip up and a rogue "fuck" escapes from my fingertips.

However, she said nothing about posting off-color pictures like this one...a young homogay I snapped in the Castro because I simply loved his shirt:

Tee-hee-hee!

Okay, I'll clean it up for a week, but after that, I'm not promising anything.

7.19.2005

the poseidon adventure

There's got to be a morning afterWe're moving closer to the shoreI know we'll be there by tomorrowAnd we'll escape the darknessWe won't be searching anymore...

Ai yi yi. All I wanted was a relaxing evening, hanging out at home by myself, making some nice bowtie pasta with red pepper sauce and sauteed vegetables from Trader Joe's, having a single glass of wine, and vegetating in front of the Zenith System-3 (sadly, sans Space Command). I took that photo above when walking home from T'Joe's; it's the front window of Rosalie's New Looks on Columbus Avenue in North Beach. You can research the place here if you want. It's a fierce drag queen beauty salon and wig rental place.

I, for one, think it's fabulous. I love the fact it's in my neighborhood and not the goddamn Castro. Not to hate on the Castro, but I'm glad to be living far away from it. That neighborhood is so self-consuming, it's at the point of being absolutely cannibalistic at times.

Tires me out.

It all started unraveling when Daigle called and asked what I was doing. I thought it might be nice to have a little company, so I invited him over and asked him if he wanted some pasta. Daigle, however, was not in a pasta mood, instead saying he had a hankering for some mac and cheese with tunafish, and he was going to stop at the liquor store (our local supermarkets in this neighborhood) to get some mac and a can of tuna. Of course, Daigle assumed I had milk and butter (I had none) and when he got here, he had to run back out and go to two liquor stores before he found one that actually had milk, because he sure as hell wasn't going to walk all the way back down to Trader Joe's.

So Daigle made his mac and cheese, and sat down...where he started eating the whole thing. He didn't realize I wanted some food as well...there was just a misunderstanding. He felt bad, and left to make a THIRD trip to the liquor store to fetch ChadFox his own box [of mac and cheese and a can of tuna]. Upon his return, however, he relayed to me what he had just seen in one of the downstairs apartments.

"Huh?" I asked, completely starving at this point. It was after 9 and I still hadn't eaten dinner. "Oh...fuck. Watch this and shut off the gas if it boils before I get back." I had just put a pot of water on my stove in anticipation of that delicious TunaMac.

Or should I have called it iTuna?

Okay, I apologize for writing that.

I ran downstairs, and was confronted with utter pandemonium.

That is the apartment of my neighbor V. Vale, out of which he runs the extremely successful RESearch Publications. Now, RESearch is one of my favorite publications, and I love his music complilations (I own all of them). I've been a huge fan of his stuff for almost a decade now...I mean, the guy knows Jello Biafra personally. How cool is that?

Now, Vale was in the process of Completely Losing His Shit. What appears to be paint splattered on the window in that above photo is actually cascading water, caught mid-cascade. You see, that's his entire life packed in that apartment, where he lives with his wife and 11 year-old daughter. Thankfully, his wife and daughter are overseas right now, and one of his employees was there emptying the soggy boxes of water on the floor that were rapidly starting to overflow.

I ran upstairs to the apartment above his, and honestly, I've never seen anything like it. For one, the apartment manager had to break the door down because the tenant, a suspected Vegas hooker, had installed an illegal deadbolt on the door and was subleasing the place to some Italian immigrants who play guitars in various touristy Italian joints on Columbus Avenue here in the 'Beach.

Smashy-smashy! The hand and green mug of coffee belong to my new neighbor across the hall from me, who was not quite sure what to make of the chaos unfolding in front of him.

So after my building manager Paul (you've all met him before) bashed down the door, they were greeted with a wall of water that literally poured out of the apartment into the hallway. It seems a faulty valve on the line that fills the toilet tank burst, effectively filling the apartment with thousands of gallons of water in a very short time. Remember we have extremely high water pressure around in these here parts. There was literally four inches of standing water in that apartment, and it was on the second floor. I walked in, and heard the rapidly-warping hardwood floor groan under the weight of all that water.

Yeah, you read that right. It groaned.

It's hard to tell from that photo (click on it to enlarge it), but I was standing on my toes in deep water in the living room of that apartment. I will say right now that the Italian dude living there keeps an immaculate household, which made our cleanup efforts infinitely easier. Vale started freaking out, because the last thing he needed was the floor collapsing in this place into HIS apartment, effectively destroying a business he had worked to build up since the late seventies.

I asked Paul if he had a garden hose. Not quite sure where I was going with this, he ran downstairs and produced one for me. I dropped one end out the window into the staircase alleyway, and told Vale to hold one end submerged in the deepest part of the flood. I ran down the fire escape, grabbed the hose, took it out to the street, and started sucking on it.

Okay. Fine, laugh. However, I knew my mad gay skills would come in handy some day.

Using my powerful diaphragm to suck a vacuum in the hose, I successfully started some siphon action. I got a few mouthfuls (and some in my lungs) of water, but after a few coughs and sputters, I managed to get the flow started...and it was actually quite strong. Vale and I drained most of the water out of the apartment in just a few minutes, 10-15 at most (that's him in the photo above). We finished up with towels produced from various neighbors and several mops.

Paul heard me gagging on the water outside (I need to work on my gag reflex), so he brought me an ice-cold 24-oz can of Budweiser with which to rinse out my mouth. Of course, being from Cleveland, I'm not gonna spit out any kind of alcohol unless absolutely necessary (I'm lots of fun at wineries) so most of that beer ended up in my stomach. Tourists and partiers walking by (I live across the street from a popular night spot) looked at me quizzically, wondering why the hell I had been sucking and gagging on a hose running from a second story window, and was now sitting there on the curb soaking wet and drinking a beer. I guess taken out of context, I must have looked like a total freak.

At one point, the Italian dude staying there came home, and was utterly confused as to what the fuck was going on. We filled him in, and then I pulled him aside and told him he should probably hide the joints he left in the ashtray on top of the TV. I mean, I was looking for a safe place to put a tealight (Daigle brought down my bag of Glimma tealights so we could see...Paul very wisely cut the power to that apartment so we wouldn't be electrocuted) and I discovered two fatties sitting in the ashtray.

Heeeeeey.

Anyway, the Italian told me he'd bring one up to me later if I wanted.

The place was completely trashed, but not as bad as poor Vale's place, which still still resembled a tropical rain forest during a downpour. His ceiling was starting to cave in a bit, so I grabbed a screwdriver and stabbed a hole so the water pooling above the sheetrock could drain out.

With a soggy "pluph" sound, a chunk fell, and the water started cascading into a strategically-placed, garbage bag-lined cardboard box on the floor.

Right after I took that picture, I felt a scalding hot drop of water land on my neck, which completely startled me. Turns out the light fixture off of which the drop originated was shorting out, effectively heating the leaking water to the boiling point. Paul grabbed a pencil and hit the light switch with it (he had wet hands) because the last thing he needed was an electrocuted and scalded tenant on top of everything else.

You know...after realizing I can only do so much...I Got The Fuck Out Of There. Another neighbor who had been assisting in the cleanup efforts announced he too was finished, and was going upstairs to smoke a bowl; soon the hallway was filled with the light, refreshing scent of Humboldt's finest.

Sometimes I think I live in Amsterdam.

By this time, it was 11:30 at night, and I didn't feel like making iTuna anymore, so I flopped down in my favorite chair and ate some leftover pizza, and Daigle and I simply vegged out and relaxed. Paul came to my door a few minutes later to thank me for everything I had done, and told me he'd be by in the morning with the plumber to fix some minor stuff I had in my apartment (dripping bathroom faucet, loose kitchen faucet & install a new aerator I bought).

Paul kept his word...and showed up this morning. I now have a drip-free bathroom sink, a nifty new sprayer on my kitchen sink (and it doesn't leak everywhere anymore, either), and he told me he'd be by later with something else for me [read: something herbal, like a nice fragrant Bag O' Boldt] and a spare key to my front door deadbolt I've been missing since I moved in.

I actually feel like I'm living in a not-so-ghetto apartment, even if my only heat sources are a space heater in my bedroom and my fireplace.

Yes...Tales of the City is alive and well in the year 2005, and sometimes I feel like I'm in some bizarre reality show where you never know what's going to happen next. 'Tis my life, I suppose. It sure beats living anywhere else right now.

Now before anyone asks me why the hell I did all this, keep in mind:

It was late at night, and Paul couldn't find any emergency plumbers to come out

I would hope my neighbors would help me if anything happened to my place

who the fuck else was going to do it?

It's just the way I was raised, I suppose. Besides, Paul told me he'd talk to the realty company that runs this mess we all live in and insist they knock off a half-months rent for me. Tell you what...here in San Francisco, that's not exactly chump change.

For the record, when I went to go make the iTuna for lunch today, I discovered much to my dismay Daigle drank all the milk last night. That fucking brat. No iTuna for Chad!

Bah!

I had to opt for a Tofurkey sandwich on whole grain bread with Trader Joe's veggie chips. Afterward, I felt like sticking a flower in my hair like a good San Franciscan, throwing on a Judy Collins record, making macrame, discussing vaginal empowerment, and just being crunchy.

:::UPDATE v1.0:::

I'd just like to say thanks to whoever nominated me over at Best Gay Blogs, not to mention the folks who run that site. You all rock. :-)

:::UPDATE v2.0:::

It seems Brian Shields caught this as well and threw it up over at KRON 4's aggregate. Thanks, Brian...if you were ever sitting around, listening to Judy Collins, weaving some macrame and talkin' bout 'ginas -- and suddenly, someone threw you into a huge vat of milk -- I suspect you'd stay nice and crunchy and flavorful.

7.18.2005

jackie-o's

Where else but the Mission District could you buy a pair of sunglasses -- namely, the ones my sister Hillary has in these pictures -- for only $7.99? She was working those glasses for every cent they were worth.

We stopped at Puerto Alegre (546 Valencia between 16th and 17th for any SF locals who haven't been there) for a delicious $12 pitcher of margaritas and some guacamole, chips, and wet-style burritos. Yeah yeah, I know...Mission locals just love to deride the place. They say it's full of "hipsters" and the food isn't "authentic" but I love the margaritas, I love the burritos, and I also love it when the mariachis wander in and sing Neil Diamond songs en Español.

Soy, dije. Y nadie oyó en absoluto, no hasta la silla.

Besides, I hardly qualify as a "hipster" ...whatever that means. We were totally working those glasses, and we didn't take them off when we sat down at Puerto Alegre:

Now, those glasses were $7.99 each, but two pairs for $14. So I picked out a pair of Jackie-O's for myself. Brechi commented a few posts back that I should post a picture of myself on this blog. Well, I don't take very many pictures of myself, and the ones I DO take, or other people take, usually turn out so awful I don't even want to look at them. I especially dislike posting photos of myself in my blog. However, after sending Brechi this photo via AIM (he was the first one besides me to see that photo), he convinced me to post it here.

So here you go, Brechi. Me. Looking ragged and scruffy this past Friday afternoon, while talking on the phone to Hillary...who has been back in Cleveland for about a week now:

Gawd. I hadn't shaved that day. My hair was doing a funky f'auk thing, even though it didn't look like that when I left the house. I was actually in a good mood, even though I appear to be scowling.

7.16.2005

when driveby sassing backfires

So I was lying on the couch this afternoon, watching a stupid Pauly Shore movie on TBS. Daigle was hanging out with me as well, and to be honest, we were both too lazy to get up and change the channel on my TV. You see, there's no remote because it was manufactured in 1984, so you actually have to Get Up to change the goddamn channel on it. So that's my excuse for watching a Pauly Shore movie, and TBS for that matter.

My phone rang, and it was my friend Joey calling, laughing uncontrollably, seemingly with a lot of other people around him as well.

"CHAD FOX, YOU STUPID ONE-EYED ASSFUCKER!" he yelled.

"Hey, you obese thirtysomething too afraid to admit he's in his thirties," I answered.

"You cockeyed cocksucker," countered Joey.

"You fluffy blubbercunt," I replied.

"Where are you right now?" Joey inquired, still laughing.

"Lying on my couch. Why?"

"Wait, where are you?"

"North Beach."

"You're not at 16th and Market?"

"Um, no. I haven't left North Beach all day."

"So...that wasn't you at 16th and Market just now?"

"Nope. Don't tell me, you yelled something at whoever that was."

Joey turned away from the phone and said, "Guys, that wasn't him."

"I suspect you yelled 'Chad Fox sucks cocks' to some random guy who looks like me in the middle of a crowded intersection." He does that all the time.

"We slowed down and yelled 'CHAD FOX SUCKS COCKS!' No wonder he looked at us like we were crazy, then started laughing at us."

"Joey."

"Yeah?"

"Do you know what that makes you?"

"What, Chad?"

"A FUCKING RETARD! HA!"

"Fuck you, Chad Fox."

See what happens when you try to sass me? Daigle knows better than to sass me in public, because he knows I always get him back even worse than he originally dished it out to me. Ask him about the K-Ingleside incident that resulted in him having a broken ankle, and me making him dance on it at Badlands. My mama never played, and I don't either.